Reigning Champions, George Csonka and John Roberts of England had a remarkable story to tell, and we can share that with you here ..


The World Carp Classic 2010 was a truly outstanding event, and one which produced some incredible drama throughout the entire week. With many records ultimately being


broken for a third successive year, the highly charged emotion elevated the intensity of pre-match anticipation amongst the anglers to a new level, and it was certainly not lost on the occasion. Madine is without doubt a remarkable venue and even when its banks are occupied by 260, albeit highly competent world class anglers, it can still produce amazing results. For many anglers, Madine once more provided action and with a record number of anglers catching fish the race for prizes was kept open right up to the closing moments of the event. At the draw, George Csonka and


John Roberts of England had the amazing good fortune to pull out the exact peg that they most desired. The pair were so confident that the peg would ultimately prove to be the winning peg that, earlier that day, they had left a message for whoever drew it. The message simply read “World Carp Classic Champions 2010”. However, just by saying something can happen doesn’t mean that it will so, when the pair then drew the peg, the self-inflicted pressure was on them to back up their words! We all know the outcome - they were prophetic words indeed. We interviewed George just a couple


of weeks after the event. Here is their story:


‘Although competition angling wasn’t really my scene, when John invited me to fish in the team back in 2000, we caught the biggest fish of the event at Madine that year. The following year we fished together


in the WCC on Lac Amance then, a few years later, we fished together in the competition here on Madine in 2009. We didn’t intend to take part in the event in 2010, but it proved too hard to resist. As it turned out, this year turned out


to be the best it could ever be for us. We were obviously delighted to get the swim we ideally wanted, although we already knew that it wasn’t going to be too easy to fish from. The problem was that there was a large weed bed stretched out directly in front of the swim and for about 40 yards out. As we had feared, the weed proved to be far too heavy to


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A stonka for Csonka!


get the boat through so we had to push it out as far as we could to about 15 yards out, where the water was at thigh depth. That was all we could manage, otherwise, if we went any further it was too difficult to actually get into the boat. It was John who hooked the first


fish, but as he tried to get into the boat – because he is disabled with major back problems – it was too difficult for him and he slipped, unfortunately hurting his back severely as he fell. From that point on John was almost completely out of action in fishing terms. However, John helped me throughout the rest of the competition doing whatever he could, like taking the fish off me and sacking them so that I could go straight back out to reset the traps. Without John being there, doing what he could, there is no question that it would have been a much bigger problem for me and I really mean it when I say that winning it was only made possible with Johns help. Anyone put in my position would have done what I did, but not everyone put in Johns position would have done what he did! Winning was of course very enjoyable but that pleasure only came much


‘I had to stop wearing my chest waders and spent the rest of the week in a pair of wellies and shorts ... I was totally drenched constantly’


later, after the pain... it was a pretty uncomfortable week for both of us, John for obvious reasons and me, because of the situation we were in... I had to stop wearing my chest waders and spend the rest of the week in a pair of wellie boots and shorts. I was totally drenched, constantly, but I couldn’t allow that to deter me from the fishing in any way. The lead was changing hands for the first few days between PVTV 1 and us so we had to fish hard.


‘We were fairly confident that we could match their numbers and as our fish seemed to be of a better stamp, hopefully, we would pull away from them at some stage. As it turned out, Team PVTV1 were


a little unfortunate and lost a few fish, which obviously helped our cause, but that’s fishing, it could have been us who were losing fish! Because of my enforced modus


operandi, I never actually saw very many of the fish until much later because, after handing them to John to deal with and sack up, I was straight back out there, repositioning the rods. The biggest carp was just over 50lb and I never saw that


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until the following morning when the marshals came to weigh it, but it didn’t matter, this was a small price to pay and we wanted to win the event. By the Wednesday night I had completely run out of dry clothes and having to wear soaking wet wellie boots meant that my feet were continuously drenched. Worse still, to accompany my boots I only had a pair of shorts to wear... I was freezing. In fact, on the Thursday night,


because I was so cold I suffered a temporary loss of feeling in my fingers and I kept dropping the boilies as I was trying to put them on the hair. Because my fingers were so numb I was bent over for ages, fumbling with them but determined to pick them up, and when John asked in a bemused voice “what are you doing?”... I replied “well, they’re not escaping; they could be the boilies that win us the competition!” Working off of a moon-phase


chart, I had evaluated everything and considered that on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday it would fish really well, and that Friday was a only a ‘maybe day’... you might catch, but you might not. Up until the Friday we had been catching fish regularly throughout every


day and evening, so at about 5PM on the Friday, I said to John, look mate, we haven’t had a take all day today and if we aren’t catching here it will be the same story everywhere on the lake. If the fish have stopped feeding completely we’ll be ok, but if we can manage to nick another fish, it could be enough for us. It was a nerve-wracking night for us and no doubt PVTV1, as they were still in contention and a couple of good fish could decide it.


‘Finally, we were told that we had won it, and we were obviously over the moon with that news, but all I really wanted to do was collapse in a heap and go to sleep. I could barely walk, and not just


because of sleep deprivation. The soles of my feet, having been continuously ensconced in wet wellies all week, were splitting and extremely sore, and I grimaced at every firm handshake of congratulations because my hands were suffering just as badly, with split skin everywhere. I watched the prize giving with great interest as almost every swim that I had put on my top list had produced fish and the anglers


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occupying them were among the prize winners. It was a great moment when our names were called out to go on stage, and to stand there, receiving the trophy and the applause was amazing. It is now two full weeks since we claimed the World Carp Classic Title for 2010 - and I can still barely walk. Was it worth it? You bet it was, every painful step of the way!’


No pain, no gain.. George Csonka with a Madine Stonka, above, and with John holding the World Carp Classic Trophy last year


WCC2010 Winner’s story


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